Today the Rochester Post Bulletin published profiles of Walz and Gutknecht behind its paid subscription firewall. Although some progressives won't be happy with Walz's support of gun rights, he's in touch with the values of the district on that one.
Both pieces stress Walz's underdog status:
Shifting public opinion prompts Walz to run
Sat, Oct 7, 2006
By Matthew StolleThe Post-Bulletin
To hear Tim Walz tell it, the notion of his running for Congress was an idea that he at first regarded as unimaginable and "ridiculous."
In fact, this political detour may never have happened if not for his growing conviction that, as he puts it, "things are shifting in this country, and I don't believe they're shifting in the right direction."
Walz, the DFL challenger to the congressional seat held by GOP Rep. Gil Gutknecht, is not someone who has trouble expressing himself. Whether it's his years as a teacher or state champion football coach or command sergeant major in the National Guard, Walz is comfortable in front of crowds. He has a rapid, machine-gun-style delivery, a coach exhorting his team to victory.
Walz rarely strays from his central theme on the campaign trail and in debates: That if people want to change course in America, it starts with changing the Congress. It's his punching bag, this Republican-dominated Congress, and he verbally pokes and jabs at it in every speech he gives.
He delivered such a verbal battery one day in a speech to a group of blue-shirted pipefitters and plumbers in Rochester.
He talked about how middle-class wages have declined over the last three years even while the wealthy have benefited from large tax cuts; how organized labor is under assault like at no other time in our nation's history; and how Congress failed to demand an exit strategy from the president before he launched the invasion into Iraq.
"We think things can be different. The issues that are important to all of us don't need to be left and right issues. We can make things work," Walz told them.
A changing constituency
Yet this is not your father's union. Union workers are no longer the reliable Democratic constituency they once were, and one of the first questions union members ask of him is his stand on gun control.
Walz, a retired National Guard military man who has fired everything from field artillery to a Winchester rifle, was able to offer a reassuring answer.
"Of course, you got to have (gun control), if you're going to hit anything," joked Walz, an enthusiastic supporter of the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
If Walz were to win, pundits say, it would be a huge upset.
Hotline, a political newsletter, ranks the Gutknecht-Walz House race among the 50 most competitive races, but near the bottom at No. 47. To appreciate the challenge Walz faces, it is important to remember that for the Democrats to take control of the House, Democrats need a net gain of 15 seats. So far, no one is confidently predicting that will happen. Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Report, predicted in his online newsletter a Democratic pick up of 15 to 17 seats.
Josh Kraushaar, House race Hotline editor, says Gutknecht is in fairly good shape.
"It's one of those races where if there was a wave -- if (DFL senatorial candidate Amy) Klobuchar wins big in the state and if (GOP Gov. Tim) Pawlenty loses and if there is a lot of anti-Bush sentiment in the state -- then you might see that race be winnable, but right now it's still kind of in our second tier of competitive races," Kraushaar said.
A rude awakening
Walz's decision to enter politics and this long-shot battle for Congress got a healthy shove at a Bush presidential rally two years ago in Mankato.
Walz had just returned from an overseas deployment in Italy in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. The day before the rally, two Mankato high school students had waited in line for several hours to buy tickets to the event but were denied tickets. So the two students, more media savvy than your average teenagers, got on their cell phones and called the media. It was big local news.
The next morning, they succeeded in getting tickets. But when the bus carrying the students and their escort Walz arrived at the rock quarry where the rally was being held, they were denied entry by Bush staffers.
In an interview in City Pages, Walz described what happened next: "I said, 'Well, they're with me.' And they said, 'Well, you are going to be arrested then.' And I said, 'My wife isn't going to be real happy about that.'"
Walz was eventually allowed entry into the event. The students were barred. Walz, a military veteran just returned from overseas, watched the rally while a Bush escort kept a vigilant eye on him.
"I don't know if I'd necessarily call it an epiphany, but it was definitely one of those things that pushed me into that," he said.
Building on strengths
For a first-time candidate, Walz, 42, is offering a surprisingly stiff challenge to Gutknecht, a six-term GOP House veteran. Hoping to define himself before Gutknecht did, Walz went to the air early with television and radio ads. He has mounted an aggressive ad campaign against Gutknecht on veteran's issues. But Gutknecht's significant financial advantage could prove telling in the final days of the campaign.
In debate, Gutknecht, the smooth-talking auctioneer, and Walz, the didactic instructor, have been evenly matched. Even in areas such as agriculture where Walz is overmatched, Walz has used humor to obscure this deficit. At FarmFest this year, Walz talked about attending a small, rural high school with 25 students.
"Twelve were my cousins. Prom dating was difficult," he said.
Walz says the Bush economy has left the middle-class behind and would repeal that portion of the Bush tax focused on the wealthy. He says his would reinvest that money to pay for middle-class tax cuts, education and health care.
His political prospects are boosted by public disenchantment with the GOP-led Congress, aggravated by the open-ended Iraq war, outbreaks of scandal in Washington, and a sense of abiding fiscal irresponsibility symbolized by "earmarks" and runaway debt.
Walz has sought to make Gutknecht a symbol of all that's wrong with the current Congress. But critics note that Walz has not always been as quick with a solution. He has blasted Gutknecht for being on the sidelines while debate over the DM&E proposal raged, but he has not tendered a solution of his own. And critics have questioned how more robust diplomacy might lessen the crisis in Iraq or U.S involvement in it.
"Take it to a diplomatic level. I'm not sure what that means, Tim," Gutknecht said at their last debate in Owatonna.
Some of Walz's challenges arise from a simple political reality. The 1st Congressional District is a conservative district, a reality reflected in Gutknecht's 20 percent victory last election. Walz doesn't deny that he faces long odds, but says that Gutknecht's record has never been challenged the way he plans on challenge it.
In his speech before the plumbers union, Walz was upbeat, a football coach urging his players to keep the end zone in their sights.
"I think we'll see a brand new world when we wake up Nov. 8. We'll have a new agenda and we can put this country back together," Walz said.
Tim Walz
Born: April 6, 1964.
Hometown: Born in West Point, Neb. Lives in Mankato.
Education: Bachelor's degree in social science, Chadron State College in Nebraska; master's degree in educational leadership, Minnesota State University-Mankato.
Experience: Army National Guard, retired at the rank of command sergeant major, 1981-2005. High school teacher and coach, 1989-present. Founder and head of Educational Travel Adventures, a student travel program to China, 1992-present.
Family: Wife, Gwen. One daughter. Another child expected in October.
Gutknecht is confident voters still trust in him
Sat, Oct 7, 2006The Post-Bulletin
Spring Valley resident Eileen Freeman met her congressman, U.S. Rep. Gil Gutknecht, for the first time this week.
It was at Golden Generation Days, a fair for senior citizens at which Gutknecht had set up a booth. Before the encounter was over, Freeman had her picture snapped with the representative and a personal invitation to call him if she ever got arrested for reimporting prescription drugs from Canada. Gutknecht explained he knew a high-powered attorney who was prepared to challenge the Federal Drug Administration over its position on drug reimportation.
"If you ever get arrested, call me," Gutknecht said.
The story offers one small window into why Gutknecht has become such a formidable and popular politician.
Gutknecht, for much of his congressional career, has been a vigorous national champion of senior citizens' right to buy cheaper drugs from Canada, an issue that has touched untold lives, as Freeman's story shows. For people like Freeman, this is no small benefit. Freeman pays $141 for the drugs from Canada that cost her $350 in U.S. markets.
The battle of his career
Gutknecht, 55, a six-term Republican representative, may be in need of all the political good will his 12-year congressional career has accumulated. He's in his toughest re-election battle in years, thanks to a list of political troubles, both local and national.
There is the war in Iraq, an invasion he supported but that a majority of Americans now think was a mistake. There is the dismal national mood, reflected in nose-plugging approval ratings for Congress in the mid-20s.
There is Gutknecht's decision to break his pledge not to serve more than six terms, and his support for the DM&E Railroad expansion, a proposal that has inspired the full-court opposition of Mayo Clinic. Then there's Gutknecht's energetic opponent, Tim Walz, a retired National Guard command sergeant major and Mankato high school teacher.
Still, Gutknecht, a representative who has taken to trouncing his DFL opponents by more than 20 percentage points, exudes confidence.
"This is a challenging year," Gutknecht agrees. "But I have enormous confidence in the voters. I mean most of these people here don't want to throw me out. I mean they know that on issues like prescription drugs, I'm on their side."
Most pundits say that a Walz victory is not unthinkable, but a Gutknecht defeat would signal a political shakeup of historic proportions leading to Democratic control of the House and perhaps the Senate.
Defeat would be a stunner
"The race has become more competitive, but I'm not sure it's going to end up being competitive," said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. "In other words, I still think he has significant advantages. He is the incumbent. He kind of walked into a spider's nest with Iraq and a few other things, but I still think (his) last two elections reflect a pretty strong base of support."
Gutknecht repeatedly refers to himself as an optimist. He is optimistic that America will prevail in the war on terrorism, despite the slog it has become in Iraq. He is confident that America lies on the cusp of energy revolution in ethanol and renewable fuels. He also says all the bashing the economy has taken from Democrats is off the mark.
"When I hear the Democrats talk about it, you'd think the economy is the worst that it's ever been. If you talk to the employers, they will say this is the strongest economy (in years)," Gutknecht said.
On the campaign stump, it's rare not to hear Gutknecht launch into some story rooted in history about America's can-do spirit or the United States' unique place in world history.
Baghdad visit jolted him
That native optimism took a jolt, Gutknecht admits, when he traveled to Baghdad in July and saw how bad conditions had become. As soon as he got off his C-130, he was thrust into a flak jacket and helmet and put into an Apache helicopter, conditions being sufficiently dangerous not to allow a downtown drive through Baghdad to the Green Zone. Gutknecht admitted being surprised.
"I kind of expected that we'd at least have secured the road from the airport to the Green Zone," Gutknecht said.
The experience occasioned Gutknecht's brief deviation from Bush's "stay the course" mantra, as Gutknecht called for a token withdrawal of American forces. The statement brought forth a flurry of national attention.
Gutknecht says he hasn't abandoned the underlying philosophy of those remarks: That Iraqis will have to step up and take more responsibility for its security. He has not set a deadline.
Walz has criticized Gutknecht for being a "cheerleader" for the war until he finally exposed himself to the reality. And while Walz has not made Gutknecht's term-limit pledge a focal point of his campaign, he accuses the GOP-dominated Congress and Gutknecht of far more serious political crimes: Of violating the spirit of the GOP-inspired "Contract with America," of budget-busting spending, of waging war without an exit strategy.
"There is much more to this than term limits. It's about the integrity and the effectiveness of this (Congress)," Walz said.
Gutknecht's response to the campaign pledge issue is to say that it's up to the voters. They own his seat, he says, and it's up to them to decide what to do with the 12 years of seniority he's accumulated. But Gutknecht already has in mind an ambitious agenda. Next year, the farm bill expires, and Gutknecht sees an opportunity to write a new energy future for America in the legislation -- one based on ethanol, biomass and renewable fuels.
"We are moving from a fossil fuel economy to a photosynthesis economy, and the next farm bill is going to be critical in allowing that to move forward," he said.
Gutknecht also wants to tackle what he see as Washington's spending problem. He also has a more expansive vision for prescription drugs, one that includes what he calls "parallel trading." The system is already in use in Europe, where a pharmacist in Germany can buy drugs anywhere in the European Union.
"I don't want people going into Canada to buy their drugs. I don't even want them to buy them online. I want them to be able to buy them with their local pharmacists, but the local pharmacists would be able to get the price" from the 25 industrialized countries that follow the same protocols as the Federal Drug Administration.
Gil Gutknecht
Born: March 20, 1951.
Hometown: Born in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Lives in Rochester.
Education: Bachelor's degree in business, University of Northern Iowa.
Experience: Elected to Congress in 1994. Chairman of House Agriculture Subcommittee on Operations Oversight, Nutrition and Forestry; also serves on Science and Government Reform committees. Minnesota House, 1982-1994. Auctioneer and real estate broker.
Family: Wife, Mary, and three grown children
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